


No Friends But Us

by draculard



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Bullied Ben Hanscom, Bullied Beverly Marsh, F/F, Female Ben Hanscom, First Crush, First Kiss, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Genderbending, Genderswap, Hurt/Comfort, Period-Typical Homophobia, Romantic Fluff, Young Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-22
Updated: 2020-07-22
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:54:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25437262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/draculard/pseuds/draculard
Summary: Ben's the new kid with the weird name and a weight problem. Bev's the poor kid who everyone thinks is a dyke.They take it from there.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Beverly Marsh
Comments: 1
Kudos: 11





	No Friends But Us

I.

The girls who adopted Ben on her first day of school weren’t bad, but there was no immediate connection between them. When Ben first saw them, it was gym class, and the other girls were eyeing her in her too-tight grey shirt. She watched their eyes flicker down to her shorts — unflattering — and then to her shoes, which were scuffed and worn.

She looked away, heart sinking, just as the other girls headed her way.

They’re coming to make fun of me, Ben thought.

It was no surprise; she was frankly shocked she’d made it as far as gym class — her last class before lunch — without being bullied. But then again, nobody had bothered to _talk_ to her yet, either. She braced herself as the other girls approached, already blushing in anticipation of their worst comments.

But they didn’t make fun of her. The tall, blonde girl at the front of the group popped her gum at Ben, looked her up and down one final time, and said, “Hey. You’re new.”

Ben said nothing. Derry was small; the blonde girl wasn’t _asking_ her if she was new, she was just making a statement.

“I’m Greta,” the girl said finally. “You wanna sit with us at lunch?”

Tentatively, Ben felt the weight on her shoulders begin to lift. “Sure,” she said. “Yeah.” Then, blinking too fast and trying not to look or sound flustered, she added, “I’m Ben. It’s weird. I know it’s weird. It’s not short for anything — my uncle’s name was Ben and he died before I was born, so—”

“Cool,” said Greta. She didn’t sound like she thought it was cool; her eyes were already wandering to other parts of the gym, and Ben got the hint — she stayed quiet for the remaining ten minutes until the bell rang, content to hover on the edge of Greta’s group.

Her new friends. 

She watched them closely at lunch, mainly because no one had bothered to explain to her how the lunch line worked at this school. She mimicked their plates carefully, too, grabbing the same wilted salad and soggy-looking hot dog as Greta did. Their table, it turned out, was close to the center of the lunch room, like Greta and her friends were the absolute nexus of Derry Middle School.

And then, just as Ben had taken her seat, Greta grabbed her shoulder and wrenched her to the side, hissing in her ear.

“Look,” she whispered. “Behind you.”

Ben turned, looking over her shoulder at the girl who’d just sidled into the lunchroom. Instead of joining the line, this girl had taken her saddlebag and sat alone at a table across the room, her head bent over what looked like a notebook from class. Ben’s eyes widened, her heart thudding — this girl, whoever she was, it was obvious why Greta had singled her out. She was beautiful; her hair was shorter than any other girl’s Ben had met, and it shone a vibrant red under the sunlight streaming in through the windows. Freckles danced over her nose, illuminating the gentle rise of her cheekbones and making the pink of her lips stand out even more.

She was dressed in clothes like a boy’s — some too large, but all utterly unique and unlike any style Ben had seen before. It worked; it couldn’t _help_ but work, she thought, when framed on a girl like that.

“Who—” Ben breathed, and then Greta grabbed her shoulder and spun her around again.

“Call her a dyke,” Greta ordered.

Ben’s mouth froze just as she was forming the words, _Who is that?_ She stared at Greta for a moment longer, not processing what she’d said in the slightest.

“What?” she said eventually.

“Just yell out that she’s a dyke,” said Greta, as if it were the most reasonable request in the world. “It’s an inside joke. She’ll get it.”

Ben didn’t have a lot of experience with friends, but she had tons with bullies. And more importantly, she could smell a lie from a thousand miles away. She wrinkled her nose, staring at Greta with new eyes — and then down at her lunch, which suddenly looked both nasty and sad where it mirrored Greta’s.

She grabbed her tray and stood. She didn’t bother to answer Greta; she just turned away without another word and scanned the lunchroom, looking for an open spot. For a familiar face.

There wasn’t one, of course. And she could hear the scornful laughs and whispers from Greta’s friends behind her, so she knew she had to move fast if she didn’t want to look stupid. There was really only one option.

Ben squared her shoulders and approached the girl across the room.

* * *

II.

“Hey.”

Bev looked up, automatically covering her sketchbook with her left hand. It was the girl from the cafeteria again — the new kid who’d sat with her last week, blushing and smiling sheepishly. Bev still remembered with utter clarity how the new girl gestured over her shoulder at Greta and her friends and said, unapologetically, _They asked me to call you a dyke._

“Hey,” Bev said, turning back to her sketchbook. “New kid.”

Ben took this as an invitation to sit; she scooted up next to Bev on the stone front step of the school, bending her knees and slipped her backpack off her shoulders. She glanced at Bev’s sketchbook — Bev saw it out of the corner of her eye — but then looked away, pretending not to be curious.

Reluctantly, Bev slipped her hand off the sketch and turned the page Ben’s way. “You wanna see?” she asked.

Ben’s head whipped around with patent eagerness. Her eyes barely drank in the sketch for more than a second before she widened them and looked at Bev instead.

“Who is that?” she asked.

Embarrassed, Bev glanced at the sketch again, half-expecting it to suddenly be a real person. “No one,” she said. “It’s just a…”

She trailed off. After a moment, she flipped the sketchbook cover around on its spiral to hide the drawing.

“A fashion sketch,” Ben finished for her, as if Bev didn’t know the right words.

“Yeah,” said Bev. She set the sketchbook aside, fumbling in the pocket of her denim jacket for a cigarette. She pretended not to notice Ben’s quiet moment of shock as Bev stuck it between her lips and lit it. When she exhaled, she noticed Ben taking a deep breath in.

Trying to catch Bev’s smoke. The thought fired up a warm glow in Bev’s chest, a feeling she couldn’t describe or name and certainly couldn’t explain. She snuck a glance at Ben, favoring her with a quick, sly smile.

Blushing, Ben smiled back. “I’ve never smoked before,” she admitted.

“I wasn’t asking,” said Bev gently. “And you don’t have to. I mean, just because _I’m_ smoking doesn’t mean…”

She thought of how much it wracked her nerves to buy smokes from the shitty gas station on the edge of the town, where they let her buy a pack or two thinking it was for her father. Worse, she thought of the times she’d stolen from him directly. It was too much emotional work to go through just to give a cigarette away to a friend.

But she glanced sideways at Ben and handed her the cigarette anyway.

“Just take a breath in,” Bev said. “A shallow breath, so you don’t cough.”

Ben nodded. Her lips touched the cigarette where Bev’s had just been. She inhaled slowly, shallowly, just like Bev said.

She coughed anyway, and they both turned it into a laugh.

* * *

III.

Ben’s room was so different from Bev’s it didn’t bear thinking about. Her bed was spacious enough for both of them to sit on, the blue comforter crinkling beneath Bev as she crossed her legs, her shorts riding up to expose the creamy skin of her thigh. Ben looked away quickly, blushing for reasons she couldn’t explain.

Her eyes tracked to the walls, to the posters of boy bands and girl groups that suddenly seemed childish and embarrassing. She wished she could rip them down right here and now, without Bev thinking it was weird. No, that wasn’t quite right — Bev would probably love it if she did that. What Ben really wished was that she’d torn the posters down before Bev ever saw them. 

But then what would she have on her walls? What could she possibly replace them with? She was stuck in that weird in-between place, halfway out of childhood but not really a teenager yet, and definitely not an adult. She could say beyond a shadow of a doubt that she didn’t want New Kids on the Block on her walls — but she didn’t want to stop listening to their music, either, and she hadn’t yet developed any interests to take their place.

Other than Bev. She snuck a glance, taking in the sunlight sparkling over Bev’s hair and kissing her skin.

Ben could fill all four bedroom walls, floor to ceiling, with photos of Bev.

* * *

IV.

It didn't’t take long for Greta and her crew to turn their sights on Ben; she made herself their enemy right from the start, allying herself with Bev in full view of the entire cafeteria. Worse, allying herself with somebody everyone else in the school saw not as Bev Marsh but as Bev-the-Slut and Bev-the-Dyke. 

They holed up in the bathroom stall together after school, waiting for enough time to pass that Greta would have surely gone home. Back to back, sharing a grimy toilet seat, they read the graffiti on the bathroom stall.

“Bev Marsh sucks _teacher_ cock,” Ben said, reciting an epithet scrawled right before her eyes in red pen. “‘Teacher’ is underlined. Which teacher is that?”

“Mrs. Heyerly?” Bev suggested. Ben could feel her shrug; Bev’s shoulders moved against hers, the touch light as a feather and brief as a kiss. Then Bev leaned forward, breaking contact to read something written in big block letters on the stall before her.

“Beverly Marsh eats pussy,” she said.

“Hm,” said Ben. “Conflicting information. What’s their source?”

Bev started to say something — Ben couldn’t tell what, but she could hear the smile in that half-syllable Bev managed to get out — but she was interrupted by the faint sound of approaching voices seconds before the bathroom door swung open. Ben and Bev fell silent at once, pulling their feet up off the floor and bracing against the stall.

Their backs touched. Ben felt her hair tangling with Bev’s. They listened as girls moved in and out of the stalls around them, chatting through the walls as they pissed and continuing the conversation non-stop as they washed their hands and moved back out the door. It banged against the wall, then fluttered to a halt, and Ben and Bev slowly lowered their feet again.

“You know,” said Ben in the silence, “I thought Greta was gonna be my first friend.”

There was too long of a pause before Bev laughed, a sad, flat sound that told Ben she understood entirely.

“We don’t need any other friends,” Bev said. Ben glanced over her shoulder and found Bev’s eyes forward, glued to the bathroom stall. To the words, _Beverly Marsh eats pussy._

Beneath that, written just as large, were the words, _Ben Hanscom is a big fat dyke_. Bev hadn’t bothered to read that one aloud. Suddenly, Ben’s throat felt tight, her vision blurring for just a second. She reached into her backpack partially to distract herself and partially with a purpose, digging for the felt-tip marker in her pencil case.

Turning to face the stall door, Ben uncapped her marker and pressed its tip to the surface. She felt Bev’s eyes on her as she wrote, _Bev Marsh is the prettiest girl in school._

The other kids would know who wrote it. They’d say it was just further proof that Ben was a lesbian; that, or they’d lay the blame on Bev herself, saying she wrote anonymous compliments to her own beauty on the bathroom stall. And they’d call both of them pathetic, but they’d do that anyway, Ben figured. She looked at Bev and saw those green eyes shining, a crooked, watery smile tugging at Bev’s lips.

“No friends but us,” Ben said, like it was a creed.

“No friends but us,” Bev said, voice cracked. She leaned forward; Ben saw the glimmer of tears, noticed the way the dampness on her cheeks made her freckles stand out all the more. She barely registered the brush of Bev’s lips against her own, quick and soft and chaste.

She barely heard Bev whisper, “Thank you, Ben.”


End file.
